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Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / Japan Pulse
Aug 20, 2010

Summer pick-me-ups for salarymen

The salarymen of Japan have got it tough in the summertime, but we've found a few things that might ease the pain.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
May 2, 2010

Renho: Japan's fiscal firebrand

Renho, a first-term Upper House member from the ruling Democratic Party of Japan, shot to stardom in Japan last November when, as a member of a government committee tasked with screening ministries' budget requests, she had several fierce, face-to-face battles with bureaucrats.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 4, 2009

Under the guise of medical history, the Mori gets radical

Don't be distracted by the big names showing at "Medicine and Art: Imagining a Future for Life and Love" — Da Vinci, Okyo, Damien Hirst — the jewels of the show lie in the obscure — timeworn or contemporary.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Sep 26, 2009

Reaching young people with music

When someone asks his age, Michael Di Stasio sometimes responds that it is the same as the late king of pop, Michael Jackson: "May he rest in peace."
CULTURE / Music
May 8, 2009

Bluesman Robert Cray plays it with soul

Robert Cray last performed in Japan 13 years ago at the Japan Blues Carnival — an experience that for him is now a bittersweet memory.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 17, 2009

'Slumdog' Boyle celebrates beating the odds

At first glance, you could hardly find a more unlikely candidate for a Best Picture Oscar than "Slumdog Millionaire." With no stars and a cast of mostly Indian unknowns, a director best known for a controversially hip film about junkies, and — God forbid — subtitles, that would normally be three...
CULTURE / Books
Mar 29, 2009

Searching for a sense of 'home'

The first I knew of the actress Ri Koran, otherwise known as Yoshiko Yamaguchi, was in 1985, while staying in a grubby hotel in Beirut. An old face-cream advertisement for the cosmetic company Shiseido had been tacked onto the bedroom wall. The image showed a woman with jade earrings dressed in a silk...
CULTURE / Books
Mar 29, 2009

Searching for a sense of 'home'

THE CHINA LOVER by Ian Buruma. The Penguin Press, 2008, 392 pp., $26.95 (cloth) The first I knew of the actress Ri Koran, otherwise known as Yoshiko Yamaguchi, was in 1985, while staying in a grubby hotel in Beirut. An old face-cream advertisement for the cosmetic company Shiseido had been tacked onto...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Dec 28, 2008

The swift strokes of 'no-brush' calligraphy

KEN-ZEN-SHO: Zen Calligraphy and Painting of Yamaoka Tesshu, with a foreword by Rupert Faulkner, introductions by Sarah Moate and Alex Bennett, an essay by Terayama Tanchu and an afterword by Takemura Eiji. Bunkashi International (Kendo World Publications), 2008, 200 pp., 33 color plates, 67 b/w pictures,...
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Dec 7, 2008

Tadao Ando: Icon and iconoclast

One of the first houses built by Japan's most famous architect, Tadao Ando, is centered around an open atrium. That sounds nice until you realize that the atrium forms the only "corridor" between each of the rooms. Fancy a hot cup of tea before bed on a rainy winter's night? You'll need an umbrella and...
LIFE / Lifestyle
Oct 26, 2008

Motel of Lost Companions

It was a foolish argument . . . the worst kind of argument too, over food. And not even food exactly, but over salad dressing.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / IGADGET
Sep 17, 2008

Casio entries put on a cute face

Baby faces: Toughness and cute fashion cachet appear to be mutually exclusive concepts. Casio begs to differ with its latest incarnation of Baby-G watches, the petite sibling of its popular G-Shock tough guys of timepieces. The 14 new models are coming out in four different series: the all-digital BG810...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Aug 10, 2008

Nanjing now: philosophy, history and Jacuzzis

Nanjing is a bustling city of 7 million, about six times its population before the Japanese rampage of 1937, and looks like many of the other modern, gleaming urbanscapes that have mushroomed up across China.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Aug 9, 2008

'Hyakunin' translations capture commission prize

In the same way that few British people have read all of Shakespeare's sonnets but many can quote at least a few lines of the lyric tradition, any adult who has gone through the Japanese school system is familiar with the Ogura "Hyakunin Isshu."
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jun 14, 2008

Shared goals, IT connect Polish-Japanese couple

Jacek Strakowski from Poland and Mai Usami from Tokyo have information technology to thank for bringing and keeping them together.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 18, 2008

'Paranoid Park'/'You, the Living'

Spree killer, rock star, average teenage skater. Director Gus Van Sant sees all three in much the same light: emotionless, affectless, blank. Numb characters for a numb generation? Or is Van Sant's penchant for an aesthetic — an aloof, arty minimalism — blinding him to things like personality, expression,...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Mar 28, 2008

Finding the real Okinawa in Yanbaru

The three baby goats frolicking in their enclosure, hewn out of northern Okinawa's itajii (evergreen oak) forest, were having a great time.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 28, 2008

The time before the 'starchitects'

A brief respite from the 21st century's relentless demand for "starchitects" — exemplified by Rem Koolhaas, Tadao Ando and Frank Gehry — can be found at the Museum of Modern Art, Shiga, in "100 Years of W. M. Vories' Works."
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / IGADGET
Feb 20, 2008

Toshiba unveils its new Gigabeat MP3 player; and 'Phoenix' hits the DS

Striking a chord: Toshiba has upgraded its Gigabeat T401 MP3 player, giving it wireless network connectivity and rebadging it as the T802. It also has 8 gigabytes of flash memory, up from the 4 gigabytes of the T401, and its battery is good for 16 hours of music playback or five hours of video. The new...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 24, 2008

From ordinary to spectacular

Go Aoki is one of Japan's most in-demand playwrights and directors. The small venues where his Gring theater company typically stages his works attract drama-world insiders — as a result, besides taking Gring on the road in early 2008, Aoki has already been enlisted for three high-profile collaborations....
CULTURE / Film
Jan 18, 2008

'Earth'

The nature documentary has long been a staple of the small screen, whether its NHK or the BBC, but in recent years more and more have been showing up in the cinemas.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 21, 2007

Inspired by repression

I am a very private person," says Marjane Satrapi, author of "Persepolis" and co-director of the new film based on her graphic novels. It's a curious statement coming from someone who's poured her own life into an autobiographical novel, but as she repeatedly pointed out to The Japan Times, it's not...
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Dec 8, 2007

Controversial Mourinho unfit to be new England coach

LONDON — Brian Barwick, the chief executive of the Football Association, probably earns at least £1 million a year. Critics may argue no, not earns — that is what he is paid. Whatever.
CULTURE / Music
Nov 2, 2007

"Re-make/Re-model Art, Pop, Fashion and the Making of Roxy Music 1953-1972" By Michael Bracewell

Roxy Music were a powerful force in 1970s pop, with their art-school roots an important aspect of their influential style. It is with a background of British Pop artists such as Richard Hamilton and David Hockney in mind that writer Michael Bracewell attempts to tell the story behind Roxy Music's formation....
Japan Times
CULTURE / OTAKOOL
Sep 27, 2007

Akihabara's awful truths

While the Establishment packages Electric Town as a mecca for manga and anime obsessives, and a magnet for camera- toting tourists, the reality differs: 'Akiba' is alienating the geeks who once made it great
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 31, 2007

'Hero'

The ways of Japanese TV drama producers must be as mysterious to their Hollywood counterparts as the statues of Easter Island.
LIFE
Aug 12, 2007

Has another society of such superlatives ever existed at all?

The fascination of the Heian Period (794-1185) lies in the fact that in all world history there is nothing quite like it. It would be hard to imagine a culture more exclusive, more fastidiously refined, more smugly incurious about the unknown, more unwarlike, more tearfully melancholic, more sensitive...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 28, 2007

Einsteins of anime

Headquartered in a nondescript office building in Kichijoji, a Tokyo suburb with a bohemian flavor, Studio 4°C hardly looks, from the outside, like the epicenter of anything. Yet this animation production house, founded in 1986 by Eiko Tanaka, Koji Morimoto and Yoshiharu Sato, has made some of the most...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Jun 26, 2007

Minoru Inaba

Minoru Inaba, 63, is the director of the Meijijingu Shiseikan Dojo, a martial arts facility located in Meiji Shrine in Tokyo. He is a master of budo, an ancient Japanese fighting style that taught samurai to be versatile and supposedly invincible. Learning budo requires training in a myriad of martial...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Jan 5, 2007

Kamakura: slow food on the coast

We spent this new year, as is our custom, in Kamakura. We helped to toll the joya-no-kane bell at our favorite hillside temple. At a little shrine under a steep, wooded cliff, we made our ritual hatsumode obeisances. And then, needless to say, we feasted in auspicious style.

Longform

Mount Fuji is considered one of Japan's most iconic symbols and is a major draw for tourists. It's still a mountain, though, and potential hikers need to properly prepare for any climb.
What it takes to save lives on Mount Fuji